


But for Grace

by jessie_pie



Series: Outtakes Reel [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Fallen Castiel, Gen, Homeless Castiel, Human Castiel, Hurt Castiel, Short, outsider pov
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-28
Updated: 2016-08-28
Packaged: 2018-08-11 09:53:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,874
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7886542
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jessie_pie/pseuds/jessie_pie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Human and injured, Castiel makes a wrong turn that might not have been such a mistake after all.<br/><br/>Please check end notes for content warnings.</p>
            </blockquote>





	But for Grace

**Author's Note:**

> This piece is a sort of offshoot from Crashing Down- essentially, what would have happened if a few very little things had gone differently, if Castiel had turned left instead of right.  
>   
> That being said, you don't need to be familiar with Crashing Down to read But for Grace. The tags should provide enough guidance.  
>   
> Supernatural is not the property of this author. Please check the end notes for content warnings.

Curt knew as soon as he saw his tent. When he came a few steps closer, he could see that the flap was unzipped, hanging limply down. But he knew before then.  
He reached into his pocket, even though he knew it contained only $22.57, the result of a day asking for spare change.  
Curt squared his shoulders and pushed open the tent flap.  
There was a man in his tent.  
He was leaning against the wall of the tent, pushing the fabric out behind him. His head was tilted back and his eyes were closed. For a moment, Curt didn’t expect him to open them, but he did, turning his head towards Curt.  
“I’m sorry.” His voice was low and gravelly, his face was streaked with sweat, and his eyes were brilliant blue. “I did not think anyone would be returning here.”  
_What are you, stupid?_ Curt wondered. _Of course someone was coming back here. I live here!_ But his gaze passed over to the man, to the back of the tent. He carried most of his things with him, but the ones he’d left were exactly where he’d put them. Even the CD tray was still sticking out of his battery powered radio.  
Out loud, he said “You can stay. For the night.” He hadn’t really expected to say that, but then, he clearly had nowhere to go.  
“Thank you.” The man nodded, and the blue eyes sank closed again.  
Curt thought the man shuddered as he stepped over his legs, but the shuddering turned into shivering and didn’t stop.  
He sat in the back of his tent, knees to his chest, as far away from the stranger as he could get. This guy was obviously sick, and Curt didn’t want to catch it. He couldn’t afford a doctor.  
Curt shut his eyes. He’d been on his feet since 6:30 a.m. and just wanted to relax, but it was hard to do that with a stranger a yard and a half away from him. Who was this guy, anyways? He didn’t even have a bag. Curt could hear his rasping breaths, the sound roughening and turning into gagging interspersed with wet coughs...  
Curt’s eyes flew open. “Hey! Do that outside!”  
The man stuck his head out of the tent, and just in time, as he heaved up a stream of water and bile. He groaned softly and crumpled back against the wall. If he hadn’t been so skinny, Curt would have worried that he was going to bring the down on both of them.  
Curt studied him through lidded eyes, looking without appearing to look. The fever, chills and vomiting all seemed to point to a familiar cause: infection.  
“Hey,” Curt asked. “You cut anywhere?”  
The man looked at him suspiciously, but said nothing.  
“You hurt?” Curt tried again.  
The guy squinted at him a minute more, then apparently decided he was trustworthy. He nodded.  
“Where?” Curt wasn’t softening his voice on purpose, but God, did this guy spook easy.  
The man hesitated, then lifted his shirt.  
“God!”  
There was a wound on the man’s stomach, swollen and red and shot with streaks of white and yellow. Curt smelled the sickly sweet, rotting stench of pus. The man dropped his shirt again and stared at Curt. There was almost no emotion in his face, just a sort of bland curiosity.  
It wasn’t cold in the tent- not with two bodies in the small space, and one of them burning with fever- but Curt felt the hairs on the back of his neck rise. This guy had to be crazy. Not like Lawrence, who gave rambling speeches on the Apocalypse regardless of whether anyone was listening, but way more out there. Lawrence at least carried a bedroll. This guy had nothing, no sense of self-preservation. How could you let a wound get like that?  
“You should see a doctor,” Curt offered.  
“Don’t like doctors,” the man said, head tilted back, eyes half-closed.  
“Or go to the E.R. They can’t kick you out, you know. Not legally, anyways.”  
“Don’t like doctors,” the man repeated. His voice was stronger now, and his eyes were open. There was something fierce in his expression. Curt hadn’t seen him move, and suspected he couldn’t, at least not easily, but he still felt instinctively this was not a man to be crossed.  
“You on the run?” he asked cautiously.  
“Not that I’d turn you in, of course,” he added hastily.  
“I am not a criminal.” The man leaned his head back against the waterproof fabric and fell silent.  
That answer didn’t exactly inspire further conversation, but Curt kept quiet mainly because he was thinking, remembering a story his uncle had once told him about a cow that had eaten poisonous weeds and gone off to a quiet a corner of the barn to die. He wondered why the stranger had chosen his empty tent.  
“Maybe I can find someone around here who knows some doctoring?” he asked. It sounded like a long shot, but he’d had a normal life once. Then his wife had left him and the bottom had gone out of economy, and that had been five years ago now. All sorts of people could be out in the camp.  
The stranger’s eyes were becoming glazed. He nodded, and that was enough for Curt. Crouching to avoid the low roof, he picked his way around the guy’s legs to the tent flap. He made no effort to get out of Curt’s way, but Curt didn’t think he was trying to be a jerk. He was tempted to ask about the hospital again, but knew better than to push his luck.  
Curt stuck his head outside. It wasn’t exactly fresh air, tainted with the smell of unwashed bodies and laced with skunky pot and other more acrid, synthetic odors he didn’t want to breathe in. The pool of vomit by the door wasn’t helping either.  
“Hey, guys,” he called. “Mick? Greg? Linda?”  
Mick and Greg had been his neighbors for a few weeks, Linda for longer than that.  
“Problem, Curt?” People were emerging from the nearby tents. Greg was such a giant that Curt sometimes wondered how he managed to fit in his tarp-draped one-man tent, Mick had a beard worthy of a nineteenth century mountain man, and Linda’s emaciated figure marked her as a crack addict.  
“Yeah, there’s a guy in my tent.”  
“He break in?” Mick sounded genuinely concerned, though Curt wasn’t sure whether it was for him or his own security.  
“Yeah… No…” The whole situation was so weird he wasn’t sure how to explain it. “He’s sick. Hurt, too. In pretty bad shape.”  
“He do this?” Linda pointed her toe at the puke. The others hadn’t taken any notice of it; such things were common in the camp.  
“Yeah.”  
“Eeurgh.” She withdrew her foot.  
“Anyone know first aid or-?” Curt asked.  
“Learned the basics in the Marines,” Greg said. “But that was forty years ago. They’ve even changed the way they do CPR.”  
“They gotta take you at the hospital,” Mick offered. “I mean, half the time they won’t do crap if you can’t pay, but-”  
“Hold on a sec.” Curt, still half in the tent, heard a soft groan to his immediate left. He hastily stuck his head back in.  
The man was slumped against the sagging wall, his eyes closed.  
“You ok there?” Curt asked.  
Silence.  
He reached out hesitantly and, for the first time, touched the stranger, grabbing his shoulder and shaking him. No response.  
Curt flung the tent flap open. “He passed out.”  
His three neighbors peered in at the limp form. Linda said what they were all thinking: “What do we do now?”  
“What is this, Tokyo Godfathers?” Greg muttered from the back of the small crowd. It meant nothing to Curt. He ignored him.  
“Does anyone have a live phone?” Despite the stranger’s earlier objections to hospitals, Curt was certain this was the only way to help him. Besides, he couldn’t just let the guy die on his floor. He _lived_ there.  
“Nope.” Mick had a first generation iPhone that burnt through a full charge in a matter of hours.  
“Mine got wet in that big storm and hasn’t worked right since,” Greg said apologetically, big hands deep in his pockets.  
Curt’s phone had died twenty minutes before the library had closed, and he hadn’t had time to charge it.  
Only one person hadn’t spoken.  
“Linda?”  
“Hey, don’t look at me.” Linda was suddenly twitching like she had live wires under her skin.  
“Linda.”  
“Look, you call 911, you get an ambulance, that’s fine, but you know what else 911 is connected to? The police. And you give the police your number, and then they wiretap you. Track you everywhere, know everything you did, everything you’re gonna do. No way I’m having that. You use my phone, it goes in the river, and you owe me fifty bucks for a new one.”  
Curt let a sigh huff out through his nose. He knew a pay-per-minute like the one Linda was brandishing cost around twenty dollars at the drugstore. He’d try to persuade her to take his as a trade once she’d calmed down a bit. Tomorrow, maybe.  
For now, he said “You’ll get a new phone. Just let me make the call.”  
“You better not be lying to me,” Linda warned, handing over the phone.  
“I’m not, I’m not.” Curt glanced back at the guy. Still out. Passing out was one thing, but not waking up… He wasn’t going to let Linda take the phone back until he’d placed his call.  
It was awkward, calling 911 with a staring audience. He'd never been the type to want all eyes on him.  
“911, what is your emergency?”  
Curt fumbled through a description of the stranger’s injuries, feeling he should have let Greg call. He’d at least had first aid training once, even if it was forty years ago.  
“We’ll send an ambulance to your location right away, sir. Can you give me your address?”  
Curt swallowed. The camp wasn’t exactly popular with anyone. Even cops tended to give it a wide berth. “I don’t exactly have an address,” he admitted. “I’m in the camp down by the river.”  
He could see Mick, gesturing and nodding. “But, uh, my friend Mick, he’ll go down to the entrance and show the medics where to go. He’s got a grey beard and a blue and green flannel shirt.”  
Mick took off towards the road, running. Too late, Curt realized he had described about a third of the camp’s population. “Well, uh, he’ll wave.” He figured Mick would have that much sense.  
“Sir, I’d like you to stay on the line until the paramedics arrive. Can you please tell me the name of the injured party?”  
With jolt, Curt realized he couldn’t do that. He’d gone against every one of his usual policies, shared his tent and stuck his neck out, all for someone he couldn’t even name, and now he realized he had no idea why.  
“No,” Curt said distantly, looking down in confusion at the limp form of the stranger. “No, I don’t even know his name.”  


**Author's Note:**

> Content warnings for: Descriptions of injuries, vomit, less-than-PC discussion of mental illness, drugs, addiction and paranoia.


End file.
